Associated Press

The Vatican's big fraud and extortion trial resumes Friday after exposing some unseemly realities of how the Holy See operates with a new spy story taking center stage.

The debate over whether to deter or accommodate minors arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border without their parents has pitted Florida's Catholic governor against the state's highest-ranking Roman Catholic.

 Cuba's leaders have launched an unusual series of neighborhood meetings across the island to debate a measure that would legalize same-sex marriage and adoption.

A consortium of groups said they hoped recent national inquiries in Germany and France, and planned ones in Spain and Portugal, would pressure the Italian Catholic Church to open its archives to independent investigators to ascertain the scope of the problem.

Face coverings will not be required during public Masses at Roman Catholic churches in the Boston area starting Feb. 28, the Archdiocese of Boston announced Thursday.

Fordham University, a Jesuit institution in New York, has named its new president, Tania Tetlow. She is the first woman and first layperson to lead the school in its 181-year history.

A lay committee looking into historic child sex abuse in the Portuguese Catholic Church said Thursday that during its first month of work it received allegations from 214 people.

Pope Francis' first foreign trip of the year is to the Mediterranean island nation of Malta, the Vatican said in announcing an April 2-3 trip that had originally been scheduled for 2020 but was postponed because of the pandemic.

A report on decades of clergy sexual abuse in Germany that shone an unflattering spotlight on retired Pope Benedict XVI has added to already strong pressure there for the church to reconsider Catholic rules on issues including homosexuality and women's roles.

Pope Francis on Sunday decried the genital mutilation of millions of girls and the trafficking of women for sex, including openly on city streets, so others can make money off of them.

Spain's prime minister wants to task the nation's ombudsman with the country's first official investigation into the depth of sexual abuse committed by Roman Catholic clergy.

Pope Francis has notched a new first in his nearly nine-year-old papacy — an appearance as a TV talk show guest.

A prominent German archbishop advocated loosening celibacy rules for Catholic priests in comments published Feb. 3 before a meeting of a German reform assembly.

An Italian appeals court has definitively annulled the arrest warrant for the prime suspect in the Vatican's big fraud and embezzlement trial. 

Pakistani police widened their manhunt Monday for two unidentified assailants who shot and killed a Christian priest and wounded another the previous day in the country's northwest.

The head of Cyprus’ Orthodox Christian Church said Sunday that he will suspend a dozen priests from his diocese because they refused to heed his call to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

The archbishop of Munich said Thursday that the Catholic church needs deep reform to overcome the "disaster" of sexual abuse.

The Vatican strongly defended Pope Benedict XVI's record in fighting clergy sexual abuse and cautioned against looking for "easy scapegoats and summary judgments".

A cardinal indicted in the Vatican's big fraud and embezzlement trial has issued a formal protest to the court claiming the pope's prosecutors had offended his dignity by suggesting he was having sex with a co-defendant.

 More than 120 employees of the Catholic Church in Germany publicly outed themselves as queer on Monday.